


Bloodsport

by ceredin



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M, Minor Violence, Sexual Content, Undercover, Yuletide Treat, mild dominance, pit fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:08:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceredin/pseuds/ceredin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their new undercover assignment involves Illya going undercover as a fighter in an illegal fighting circuit. When Napoleon is sent in to assist Illya, he thinks he's swanning in to save the day. </p><p>What ends up happening is a little more than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodsport

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shayheyred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayheyred/gifts).



> I really wanted to write something for one of the Yuletide pinch hitters and I have to confess I'm terrible at thinking up prompts so the basis of this came from an Illya-as-a-pit-fighter prompt on the MFU kinkmeme. I really hope you enjoy it, Shayheyred. 
> 
> Many thanks to csoru for her invaluable beta assistance and the twitter crew's cheerleading. ♥

The last thing Napoleon expects when he's ushered out of the stairwell by a thug whose gaze lingers with no subtlety on Napoleon's slightly too expensive watch is the sheer size of the underground ring. 

Humidity slaps him in the face as he steps through the door, dank with sweat and stale beer. There have to be somewhere near three hundred men there, between the rough bar and the pit. A former war bunker, the concrete walls are stained from the smoky haze that hangs over the room, and wet from the accumulation of men. It's thoroughly unpleasant. 

The room heaves with atmosphere as the men surrounding the pit yell for bets or to cheer on their favourite, or roar at a brutal blow. Napoleon is taken aback by the noise, and feels the adrenaline start to rise in response. 

The thug who escorted him in shoves and kicks his way through the crowd to where Thomas Albrecht sits, sequestered from the roaring crowd, like a greasy Roman emperor overseeing his filthy arena. Albrecht doesn't look away from the fight going on below and Napoleon takes the opportunity to scope him out. He wears his wealth — almost entirely stolen or invisibly stained with the blood of its former owners — ostentatiously, in the gold chains and heavy rings. The suit he wears is expensive but ill-fitting. It was not made for him. If not for his vicious mind and astute business acumen and skill at pain and murder, Napoleon would have written him off as a nonentity, someone trying too hard to be someone they were not. 

If it's a front, it's a very clever one. Looking at the man laughing uproariously at the violence in the ring below, Napoleon could have been mistaken for thinking Thomas Albrecht is everything he presents as. A ruthless bully and criminal. 

But he isn't. Napoleon knows a mask when he sees one, and he's not meant to see the shrewd calculation in Albrecht's eyes when he finally glances at Napoleon as if only just realising he's there. 

"You must be John Darcy," he says. His rough drawl is as ill-fitting as his suit. 

Napoleon inclines his head. "I'm here about my business partner. I understand he came to see you."

"Ah. The Russian." There's nothing fake about the vicious amused curl to Albrecht's lip. "A very displeasing man." He twitches his finger in the direction of the pit. 

In hindsight, Napoleon will wonder how he didn't notice, but for now he glances towards the pit and freezes. When Waverly indicated Illya may need back up — a delicate way of saying 'they'd lost all but the vaguest of contact with him and needed Napoleon to investigate' — Napoleon just assumed that meant he'd be swanning in there, with all his charm and charisma, to close Albrecht the way Illya couldn't, because Illya had about as much charm and charisma as a wet sock. 

But this—

This isn't about charm, and certainly isn't about charisma.

Illya is in the pit, stripped down to a once-white undershirt, stained with dirt and blood, just as his bare arms were. His hands are wrapped with equally filthy material to pad his knuckles from the heavy, relentless punches he's landing.

He fights like… Napoleon has seen Illya fight a lot. He normally fights like a KGB agent, and from his training in the special services, he is intense and quick. Any fight is done with as quickly as possible. This, on the other hand, is a leisurely torment. The sheer mercilessness of the way he _performs_ for the roaring crowd, beating the man he's been pitted against around the pit, playing with him like a vicious cat with a hapless mouse. It isn't that he's untouchable, but he takes his own hits like they're butterfly wings; even a punch to his gut that Napoleon thought he would have folded around barely rocks him. 

Napoleon has always found Illya intriguing, and something in the way he fought has always appealed to the savage side Napoleon hides beneath his well-tailored suits. But this is — this is something else. It flushes through him, like— 

Waverly developed something of a habit for not giving all the details when assigning Napoleon jobs, in a way Napoleon is sure he doesn't do with Illya or Gaby. "For a sincere response," he'd say after, like Napoleon wasn't capable of an honest reaction. Well. This is an honest reaction, he thinks wryly and tries not to shift in his chair. 

The things Waverly would conceal from Napoleon, however, were usually only minor details. 'Ilya fighting in a pit' seemed rather on the major side, even for Waverly. 

So, maybe he didn't know. Maybe it was a new development. All the files on the mission had Illya as a Russian arms dealer, working out a deal with Albrecht to ship him a substantial number of small arms. Napoleon's cover of choice was as his business partner, come to see why the deal had not been closed. 

Napoleon straightens, breathes out to settle himself, and smooths his cuffs to settle his mind back on the task at hand. Maybe he really is swanning in then, with all his charm and charisma, to get Illya out of this situation. Illya would owe him a lot for this. A _lot_. The thought pleases him immensely.

He leans in towards Albrecht so his voice can be heard over the roar of noise filling the room. "Perhaps you could tell me what he did to deserve this." Napoleon pitches his tone to imply he thinks it's no less than Illya deserves.

Albrecht looks at him. "You Russian, too?"

"Me? No, of course not." Surely the American accent is a dead giveaway. 

Albrecht shakes his head. "There was a Russian girl, and she broke my heart. I don't like Russians."

Nothing Illya did then, just a petty dislike from the start. Napoleon's read the file on Albrecht. There's no mention of any Russian girls, so it mustn't even have been significant enough to warrant a line in his dossier.

"Maybe I should send you down there to fight him, hmm? You beat him, you get your deal." Napoleon would never admit it, but he's not keen on that idea at all. He struggles to beat Illya hand to hand on a good day, even with them training together, and Illya's never shown this brutal side on the training mat, the coiled violence as he bounces on his toes and loosens his arms, waiting for the next opponent. He's channelling his rage, instead of suppressing it, and has never looked so dangerous. This thrills Napoleon entirely more than he'd care to admit. 

"He's beaten eight in a row now, of those who've come up against him," Albrecht says, sprawling back in his chair. "I told him if he beat ten, I'd make the deal." He gestures to someone across the pit, and an extraordinarily large man, stripped to the waist and _steaming_ , who looks more like a slab of muscle with limbs, drops over the concrete wall down into the pit. 

"So you'd make the deal either way," Napoleon says, when he manages to drag his gaze away from the sharp smile on Illya's face as he circles the man. The volume in the room has surged again, and even after eight wins, the men surrounding the pit still put their money on the slab of muscle.

When he looks to Albrecht, the man is grinning too, just as vicious as Illya, but for entirely different reasons. "Oh no, you'd still have to beat him. You lose, I kick you both out. You tell him to lose, I kick you both out." His eyes linger none too subtly on Napoleon's cufflinks. "Or maybe we can come to a… different arrangement."

Ah.

Napoleon leans back, his mouth still stretched in the benign smile he's had pasted on since he entered the room. He pops the links free from his cuffs. "How about," he says, also taking off his watch, Albrecht's gaze like a hawk on his movements, "we make a bet."

-

Illya notices Napoleon about the same time he breaks the slab of muscle's nose, followed by his right arm. A sharp kick to the muscle's chest slams him into the wall of the pit and he slides down the wall, holding his arm. Illya steps back, looks up. Napoleon meets his eyes with a raised eyebrow as if to say, _Are you_ quite _finished?_ But maybe there's something else in his gaze, too. 

The noise in the ring is deafening, so Illya can't hear what Albrecht has to say, but he recognises the sharp cutting gesture. It's over. The crowd is disappointed, baying for blood — not even Illya's anymore, just anyone's; they feel robbed of their final fight (Illya feels robbed of his final fight) — and Albrecht's enforcers move in to clear the room. 

The room has emptied even before two of Albrecht's henchmen can drop into the pit to remove Illya's opposition—

And Illya ducks the man's clumsy swing of his unbroken arm, elbowing him in the face. The man howls as something crunches further in his already broken face. Illya's on him, twisting his broken arm behind his back and the man's howl turns into a shrill screech. 

"Enough, Russian. He's learned his lesson."

The temptation to smash the other man broken face-first into the concrete wall, over and over until his face is jelly, is almost overwhelming, but Illya manages to rein it in. He's not here to fight, he's here for a mission, he tells himself as he steps back. Blood smears red on the back of his wrist when he wipes his nose and after nine fights of varying difficulties over three days, he hurts all over. 

But it's a good hurt, he's always enjoyed fighting like this. When he could let go of everything and not have to think beyond the next block or punch. 

Napoleon's watching him, sharp-eyed, as Illya pulls himself up the rusty steel ladder out of the pit. He's aware of it, but he doesn't bother to acknowledge it. It's probably just going to be more scorn. 

As Illya approaches, Albrecht stands and tosses him his jacket. "Maybe now I've met a Russian I don't hate," he says, like it's meant to be a compliment. "Maybe you should give up this line of work with him," he says, flicking his fingers dismissively at Napoleon, who clearly can't help bristling a little, visible only to someone who knows him in the slight angle of his head. "And come fight for me. Do this full time. You'll earn ten… maybe twenty times as much in less than half the time."

Illya lets Albrecht think he's genuinely considering it for a moment — flexes his fingers, his gaze straying to the empty pit, still splattered with blood, some of it his — before shaking his head. "You make a tempting offer, but I have prior commitments," he says, indicating Napoleon in turn.

"Ah," Albrecht says, sounding genuinely regretful. "I understand. Our deal was for ten, but your partner here made a bet and saved me sending another fighter to hospital." He laughs a little ruefully. "I misjudged you—"

"Most people do," Napoleon interjects smugly, and there's something downright possessive in the way his hand comes down on Illya's shoulder. Illya cuts him a sideways glance at that but Napoleon ignores it. 

Albrecht continues, "But a deal is a deal — come by my office and we'll arrange a delivery date."

"In a moment," Napoleon says. "We'll be by once Ivanov here has cleaned himself up and looks respectful again."

"Of course." Albrecht looks amused. "You do have a reputation to maintain." Illya wonders just what impression Napoleon has given Albrecht in his short time by the pit, as Albrecht waves for one of his men to lead them from the building. 

Either way, the delay will give one of them time to contact Waverly to let him know the deal has been given the go ahead, so he'll be able to move his standby teams in to take Albrecht's warehouses. 

The accommodation Illya's taken for the mission is a single spartan room in a boarding house, the locks on the door brand new. There's a rickety bed in the corner that Illya's legs hang off of when he tries to sleep, and a dresser against the opposite wall with a splotchy, tarnished mirror. On it is a basin of water drawn from the shared bathroom, as well as the medial supplies Waverly provided for use as necessary when Albrecht 'sentenced Illya to the pit', as Waverly had phrased it. 

"You didn't have to bet your things to stop the fights." Illya gestures to Napoleon's loose cuffs, his bare wrist. He knows what Napoleon normally wears, and their absence is obvious. "Albrecht knew by then I wouldn't lose—"

"I can't believe you risked the mission by allowing him to make you fight," Napoleon interrupts, his tone one of irritation. He seems more annoyed by that than his cufflinks and watch. Illya supposes he'll probably reclaim them shortly when they take Albrecht in. "You should have pulled out and contacted me. It's clear I could have solved all of this before it went that far, Waverly would have—" Illya shoots Napoleon an amused look and Napoleon makes a truly entertaining noise of disgust. "Waverly knew."

"Of course Waverly knew. It's why I volunteered. This Albrecht, he does not — did not like Russians." Illya taps his chest and probably fails as he tries not to look insufferably smug at how little Waverly has told Napoleon. "So I was perfect for the job."

"Hmph. Conceit is not a good look on you," Napoleon says accusingly. 

"I learned from the best."

"Mm." While Napoleon might be irritated with Waverly's life choices, he'll take even the most backhanded compliment like the preening peacock he is. The look of irritation doesn't last long as his gaze keeps dragging to Illya's chest and arms like he can't help himself. Illya's not even sure he knows he's doing it.

It's… interesting. And it kicks his pulse up a notch, because he knows the heat in Napoleon's gaze. Never thought to see it directed at a man — never thought to see it directed at him. Illya props his hip against the dresser, and picks up the folding knife and cuts away the bindings protecting his knuckles. Three days of fighting and the wraps now merely protected the skin from breaking, his knuckles swollen and aching. It's a good pain, though. Comforting. He flexes his fingers. 

A movement in his peripheral vision is Napoleon turning away, shrugging out of his jacket and lighting a cigarette. The brief shudder to the flame makes Illya smile. 

And it just broadens when he deliberately turns away and in the mirror's reflection can see Napoleon now refusing to look at him, his gaze focussed intently on the cigarette in his hand. Refusing to look at him, that is, until Illya slowly and deliberately strips off the filthy singlet and then he gaze swings to Illya like a compass needle to magnetic north. 

Illya reaches for the cloth floating in the basin, and wrings it out to clean away the blood and the dirt from his arms and face. Napoleon stops pretending then. He's not even subtle as he turns his head to watch (it took Illya a while, but he realised eventually that with _this_ , subtlety is not Napoleon's strongest suit, not when he has so many other cards in his hand that he can play).

It's a risk, but Illya is used to weighing up the pros and cons to find an acceptable outcome. Napoleon's always been free with his…affections, so to speak, and eager to torment Illya with his flirtations. Did he only do it _because_ he knew Illya would reject him every time? Because he knew he would never have to put his money where his mouth is? Did he think that Illya would be stoic and Russian and horrified by homosexual advances? 

It is true that Illya hasn't been interested. Not from Napoleon, anyway, before now. A point which would be moot in about a minute, Illya has to admit, should this go the way Napoleon's behaviour is telegraphing it should. 

...Or is Napoleon Solo all talk?

Illya turns and, reaching out, he wraps his fingers around Napoleon's wrist — feels the sudden tension that floods through Napoleon at his touch — and takes the cigarette from his fingers with his other hand. 

Drops it into the basin where it hisses out in a heartbeat, just like any pretense of resistance when Illya shoves him back against the closed door, so hard his head thumps the timber. 

Illya has read him to perfection. He doesn't even pretend to not be into it, to try and push Illya away when Illya pressed up against him and kisses him. Napoleon tastes like the cigarette he'd smoked to hide the way his hands were shaking; Illya knows his own mouth would still taste like blood. 

It's hard not to grin against Napoleon's mouth when he feels Napoleon grope at him, rubbing at his dick through his trousers like he thinks he's the one with any control here, his other hand sliding around and over Illya's ass. No, there's really nothing subtle at all about what Napoleon wants, but Illya's the one running the show even if Napoleon doesn't realise yet. He can feel the way Napoleon smirks against his mouth as he unbuckles Napoleon's belt and tugs at his trousers. "Eager, Peril?" Napoleon asks, a little breathless and a lot amused. Like he thinks this is going to go somewhere else entirely, as he reaches for the button on Illya's trousers.

"You have no idea," Illya says, and then he's twisting Napoleon around and pushing him down on the bed face first. The noise Napoleon makes is startled but approving. 

He knows Napoleon thinks he's some kind of blushing virgin, having never touched a woman before. He isn't. His experience with women might be a little short, and Napoleon's in for a surprise if he thinks Illya has no idea what he's doing now, with a man. That thought would have been blown out of the water anyway as Illya carefully — but firmly, because Napoleon is not made of glass — works him open with his spit-slick fingers, Napoleon arching under him needily. "Going to enjoy this," Illya says, shoving down his own trousers with his other hand to free his dick and Napoleon groans in agreement. 

Illya's hard already, thrumming with arousal. And the pathetically turned on noise Napoleon makes as Illya slowly pushes into him is like lightning up his spine. He has to stop a moment and just breathe once he's fully sheathed in the heat of Napoleon's body. This should feel strange and dangerous, but it doesn't, it just feels right.

When Illya starts to thrust Napoleon takes God's name in vain, then Illya's, his helplessly moaned, "Yes, oh God, yes…" and the drawn out desperation and need of it turns Illya on even more. He could — he could almost come just from the noises Napoleon makes. 

It's obvious Napoleon has no experience being manhandled during sex, instead so used to being the one in control of everything. Illya would bet his pit winnings that Napoleon had never even let himself let go. Not like this. Not completely, sobbing for breath against the pillow, rutting against the mattress. It's stunning. It's… it's beautiful. It's something Illya will never forget. 

Illya pulls himself up a little, then hauls Napoleon up by the hips too, so he's braced on his elbows, ass in the air as Illya fucks into him. The only sounds in the room is the sound of flesh on flesh, Illya's panting and Napoleon's helpless groans with each thrust. 

Napoleon whines when Illya's hand wraps around his dick and Illya jerks him, sharp and rough. It doesn't take much — Napoleon pushing back against Illya's dick and shoving forward into his hand with almost equal desperation. He sobs for breath as he comes in jagged spurts against Illya's fingers, then the noise cuts off — his teeth clamped tight on anything he might say in the heat of the moment, like he wasn't begging for it only moments before. 

All it takes is a few hard thrusts and Illya follows him, his vision whiting as his orgasm rushes through him, hips stuttering as he curls forward over Napoleon, panting against the sweaty skin of Napoleon's neck where the hair curls at his nape. 

They stay like that a moment, together, before Illya presses his mouth against Napoleon's nape, drags his aching fingers across Napoleon's hips and he pulls out. The bed is far too narrow for Illya to gracelessly flop down next to Napoleon as he might want — hell, it's too narrow to flop down even by himself on a good day — so he stands instead, tucking himself away and tugging his trousers back up, before sitting back down on the edge of the bed. He reaches for Napoleon's cigarettes and lighter where they've tumbled to the floor and lights himself one. 

He's thoroughly unsurprised when Napoleon reaches over and plucks it from his fingers after tidying himself, pulling the mussed sheet over the wet patch and sitting himself. Illya almost expects him to look smug at echoing Illya's own gesture, at having put Illya where he wanted him (if perhaps expecting instead for Illya to be the one face down on the mattress), but he looks content. 

It's a very different Napoleon to what Illya was expecting. But then: "You know, I never thought—" he starts.

"Don't ruin it," Illya interrupts. 

"Ruin it?"

"You'll say something," Illya says as he takes back the cigarette. "Inappropriate and… you. You always do."

"Me?" The look of wounded innocence on Napoleon's face is farcical. "You mean, like how I can still feel y—"

" _Napoleon._ "

Napoleon stands, carelessly pulling on his jacket and tidying his sleeves like nothing untoward has happened. Like he hadn't just been face down on Illya's bed. But Illya doesn't miss the way he shifts, a little uncomfortably. "I'll go and make the call to Waverly. There's a phone in the foyer of the hotel I'm staying in. I'll meet you at Albrecht's office in 20 minutes." He pauses a moment before closing the door, looking back at Illya. There's something in his look Illya can't decipher.

"Yes, Cowboy?"

Napoleon smiles. "Nothing," he says, closing the door behind him.


End file.
